


Scars

by hyphyp



Series: Tumblr Fics [5]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Drabbles, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-04
Updated: 2016-03-04
Packaged: 2018-05-24 15:44:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6158576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hyphyp/pseuds/hyphyp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before Q was Q and after he was a civilian, he was a hurt thing, a hurt creature in the dark.</p><p>10 drabbles 100 words each.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scars

1 (asking)

The psychologists want to know how he’s coping.  They want to know how he sleeps at night, if he’s eating okay, if his mood is stable. Does he have nightmares?  Does he have flashbacks?  Does he find himself losing time or feeling like a distant, anesthetized part of himself, drifting inward, inward, growing small and numb?

“Let’s talk about your relationship with your body.”

Q thinks, but does not say, my body and I are closer than ever.  We have been asked and we have refused to respond.  They tried to break me open.  I bent into a question mark.

 

2 (defeat)

And there will come a day when he will have to turn around and face the scar tissue he has raised and used like steps. And there will come a day when things will begin to have consequences again, the sound catching up to the flash. And there will come a day when his body turns traitor and the trembling sets in and he wakes up in the night with a mouth that won’t wet.  He’ll lie there licking the fullness back into his own lips, counting marks on the ceiling.  But it won’t be defeat.  It will be retirement.

 

3 (idea)

“I have an idea about you, Quartermaster,” Bond says, running a finger over the scar on Q’s shoulder.

“Your ideas are bad,” Q says.

“Not all of them.”  He replaces his finger with his lips.

“All of them,” Q insists.  “What’s your idea about me?”

“That your heart is too large for your body.  It gets you into trouble.”

“Not my brain?”

“Your brain is what keeps you safe.”

“My brain is what keeps _you_ safe, Bond.  What keeps _me_ safe is you.”

“Same thing.”

“It’s really not the same thing at all.  I told you your ideas are bad.”

 

4 (warp)

Bond sees scars without reading the history there, reads only the thing that binds all of MI6’s employees together – trouble.  But someday Q knows he will learn.  Someone will tell him or he’ll stumble across it the way he seems to stumble on all secrets, kicking them out of the dirt with the toe of his shoe, sending a dark cloud spraying up in all directions.  He’ll learn and from then on every time he looks at Q, he’ll be seeing through a different lens.  The shape of Q will be warped.  Or revealed. Either way, Bond will see bending.

 

5 (jazz)

Bond is rifling through Q’s album collection while Q smokes and pretends not to watch him.  He wants to ask when Bond is going home.  He wants to ask Bond to stay.  He keeps the cigarette in his mouth mostly to prevent either.

“There’s a lot of jazz here,” Bond says.

“Not what you expected?” Q asks.

“I had no expectations,” Bond says.

He pulls out an Ella Fitzgerald record and puts it on.  The band starts up, lively and echoing even in the small flat.  Q blows smoke at the ceiling, watches it curl.

 _Something’s gotta give,_ Ella sings.

 

6 (pulp)

The thing that civilians and politicians don’t understand is how much meat there is to this business of empire. There is an immense mountain of flesh, and there’s blood over and underneath it.  In the secrecy of his mind, Q believes the two things are unequal to each other, but he never says so out loud.  Not to Bond, for whom the equation must come out even or else the whole of him starts to unravel like a cheap suit.  But some days Q can’t help but do the math.  He starts to wonder if he’s not earning his scars.

 

7 (comfort)

Bond has a thing for kissing Q’s scars. Q’s not sure how he feels about it.  He’s not sure how Bond feels about it, either, but it seems like one of those things that begs not to be explained.  Q lies there, allowing it, and wonders if it’s a good idea.

Bond only has bad ideas, he reminds himself.

Bond brushes his lips across the thick white spider web on Q’s hip, traces its strands with his teeth like he wants to dig out the long gone bullet with his mouth.

Who are you comforting?  Q wonders.  Me or you?

 

8 (moral)

Q knows that Bond has been captured and tortured before, but it doesn’t lessen the panic.  He keeps reliving his own captivity, reliving the pain, and the waiting for pain, which was sometimes worse.  He feels selfish for making this about himself, for wanting Bond back in part just to stop the remembering.  

I needn’t worry, he tells himself. Bond will come back and everything that is the now will be trapped in the past with the rest.

“There is a moral here,” he says to his reflection, haggard and pale.

He can’t think what it is.  But it’s there.

 

9 (or)

“Before I was Q and after I was a civilian, I was a hurt thing, a hurt creature in the dark.  I’m very good at what I do, you see.  I’m in high demand, and fatally weak.  You sniffed it out right away.  I’ve got too big a heart.  It beats too hard.  All those little veins constrain me.  So they cut it out and they cauterized the wound so nothing could grow back.  They said, ‘Give us what we want, or we’ll cut out something else.’  A heartless creature has little of itself left to lose.  I lost it.”

 

10 (resolving)

Q kisses the scar on Bond’s neck, the second smile, and pulls away.

“Do you feel anything?” he asks.

“No,” says Bond.

Bond hesitates before leaning forward to kiss the scar on Q’s shoulder.

“What about you?” he asks against it.

“No,” says Q.

Bond straightens.

“What do we do, then?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” Q says.  “Don’t give each other more of them.  Maybe that’s all we can do.  Maybe it’s all anyone can do.”

“I don’t think we can do that either,” Bond says.

Another bad idea, Q thinks.  But Bond’s bad ideas are often also right.


End file.
